


Between a rock and a hard place

by sky_kaijou



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! - All Media Types
Genre: Aged Up, Fluff, M/M, Violetshipping Secret Santa 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-21
Updated: 2020-12-21
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:08:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28212159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sky_kaijou/pseuds/sky_kaijou
Summary: So this project was a little more personal.
Relationships: Jounouchi Katsuya | Joey Wheeler/Kaiba Seto
Comments: 15
Kudos: 24





	Between a rock and a hard place

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Venuxx](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Venuxx/gifts).



> For the Violetshipping Secret Santa 2020  
> For our most wonderful mod, Venus. Who has been having a busy year.  
> We appreciate you so much. <3

Tink tink tink.

A bead of sweat falls from Katsuya’s temple.

Summer is already a scorcher, and it’s bleeding deep into Autumn. The ethereal still of his workshop blankets him as he carefully places his tools down. Wipes his forehead with the back of his hand. Pours over his artwork once more. Is he sure this is what he’s going to create? It took fifty-two drafts to get this far. Time’s running out. This project needs to be completed, and soon.

The process takes months. And it’s soon going to be a whirlwind of birthdays, Christmas, New Year.

Anxiety sets in. Maybe he should start again? Make a new mould. Is this mould perfect enough? No, the last ring he poured in this size was perfectly fine. Perfect, flawless. He was just being anxious. Just being picky.

His pickiness garnered his reputation. He’d worked hard and gotten rewarded so greatly in return.

Starting at twenty-two, a fluke opportunity in his final year of art school had him placed, not in a traditional workshop but in jewellery making. Making beautiful broaches for women with white elbow-high gloves. Creating entire lines of products with the hope that they’d sell, and the pure joy of selling out. Some properly in-house manufactured runs with his supervisor, some one-off pieces that started as designs for his final portfolio. Then requests began to flood in for custom pieces as murmurs spread about his unorthodox designs. And before he knew it he was booked out a year in advance.

An incredible problem to have, and now the studio he worked in was functionally his own.

Katsuya’s mind wanders to the customers that have walked in his doors over the years.

The weird requests, like the lady who Katsuya swears was a witch by her aura, who initially wanted a scorpion set in amber and turned into a necklace, who then returned with even wilder requests. Katsuya happily worked on all of them because they were a break in sometimes otherwise monotonous casting, and the stories she told while they had meetings were always interesting.

The humbling ones, like preserving ashes in lockets and rings of passed loved ones. Katsuya admits he cried for hours after a widower came in, clutching the ring his wedding ring of his beloved wife who had been killed in a car crash. He spent the most time working on that until now. Making sure he could do it justice. The positive feedback was more than Katsuya could handle. Even now thinking back, he has a tear in his eye.

The drop-dead gorgeous ones, where money was no obstacle and designs were a fun creative challenge between himself and the clients. The items that ended up at international film premieres and award shows due to their exclusivity. It was humbling if nothing that Katsuya’s name was in the mouth of stars. 

Katsuya really treasures another customer, probably the most. In the winter of his twenty-eighth year, dressed in a blue and grey scarf and a coat to his knees, a surprise request from a name that Katsuya knew well for some custom-wear. Falling oddly in love with Katsuya’s style over the years. Or so the excuse was to at least exchange details.

They grabbed coffees when they worked through designs together, and accidentally fell into something that felt like home.

Grabbing his tools, Katsuya twists the claws around a ruby into shape, the sharp red reminding himself of the time he spent duelling. And the claws around a deep blue sapphire that reminded him of his rivals. And finally around a repurposed diamond he’d saved from a family heirloom.

So this project was a little more personal.

He just really hoped Seto would say yes.


End file.
